Impeachment not hard to fathom

Published: Tuesday, July 29, 2014 at 11:53 AM.

To the editor:

So the thinking is, among some Republicans including Bob Goodlatte of Virginia and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, that Obama has not committed acts that warrant impeachment — that his record is free of the kinds of crimes warranting impeachment.

The Constitution, in plain language, says impeachment is allowed for treason, bribery and other “high crimes and misdemeanors.” If Goodlatte cannot find a meaning of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” then I would direct him to the first and last word on the meaning of the Constitution — The Federalist Papers.

In The Federalist No. 65, Alexander Hamilton, writing as Publius, is turning to a question of the decision by the Constitutional Convention to assign to the Senate the power to serve as the “Court for the Trial of Impeachments.” He wants it to be understood why the Senate, not the House, not the Courts, not some other body was to be preferred for trials of persons impeached by the House.

To move to that question, he first takes note of what manner of questions and conduct would bring an officer of the United States, even the chief executive, before such a court. Publius clarifies the matter: “those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated political, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.”

While Goodlatte seems focused on the absence of some video of Obama taking a multi-billion dollar bribe or the like, that is decidedly not with what the impeachment power is principally concerned.

So what injuries, “denominated as political,” has Obama inflicted on our society?

So the thinking is, among some Republicans including Bob Goodlatte of Virginia and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, that Obama has not committed acts that warrant impeachment — that his record is free of the kinds of crimes warranting impeachment.

The Constitution, in plain language, says impeachment is allowed for treason, bribery and other “high crimes and misdemeanors.” If Goodlatte cannot find a meaning of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” then I would direct him to the first and last word on the meaning of the Constitution — The Federalist Papers.

In The Federalist No. 65, Alexander Hamilton, writing as Publius, is turning to a question of the decision by the Constitutional Convention to assign to the Senate the power to serve as the “Court for the Trial of Impeachments.” He wants it to be understood why the Senate, not the House, not the Courts, not some other body was to be preferred for trials of persons impeached by the House.

To move to that question, he first takes note of what manner of questions and conduct would bring an officer of the United States, even the chief executive, before such a court. Publius clarifies the matter: “those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated political, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.”

While Goodlatte seems focused on the absence of some video of Obama taking a multi-billion dollar bribe or the like, that is decidedly not with what the impeachment power is principally concerned.

So what injuries, “denominated as political,” has Obama inflicted on our society?

Begin with his refocusing of the Internal Revenue Service as a tool for the suppression of political speech or disagreement with the president or his party. Continue with the likely actual crime of the destruction of seven IRS computer hard drives and the naked cover-up of criminality by the chief law enforcement officers of the United States as a grave injury to society itself.

What about the so-called Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — Obama-care. We, as a nation, were sold this bill of goods on claims that it was essential to our national economic health. As it turned out, however, the chief executive immediately began doling out exceptions and exclusions from mandates in the act, and delaying implementation of its provisions.

Exclusions and exceptions went to industries and unions — a matter of quid-pro-quo lifting of requirements based on claims of need. Delays, as we know, were imposed in order to give the Democratic Party a time machine. They needed then, and need now, not to have an electorate going to the polls in November 2012 or on Nov. 4, 2014, remembering which party — the Democrats — single-handedly delivered our health insurance and our health care into the maw of the federal government.

What is missed for many though is the meaning for the whole society of these delays, exceptions and exclusions to Obama-care. An enterprise that is so convoluted on the basis of partisan interests of industries, unions and politicians may be many things, but it is hardly essential and, in fact, has done injury to our economy and the civil society.

No sense stopping at Obama-care though, given this administration’s decisions to run guns. Fast and Furious, of course, run by Attorney General Holder, put guns into the hands of Mexican cartel drug lords. Some of those guns came back to the United States and were even used to kill American federal employees. Others of those guns stayed in Mexico and, in one of the most heart-rending instances, the guns were used to slaughter 12-, 13- and 14-year old girls attending a birthday party.

There is more. Frankly, there is too much more. That Goodlatte believes that the basis for impeaching Obama does not exist leaves me with a dread that the one truly representative body of our federal government is captained by the ignorant or the damned.